It has nothing to do with America, Australia, Canada, Panama, Bolivia, Portugal or any other country. There are numerous government organizations and private entities worldwide that are constrained by budget and make do with what they have as long as they can (and I applaud them since it's my taxes or premiums they're spending) and cannot go out and get the 'latest and greatest' whenever the urge strikes, or just because it is the 'latest and greatest'.
I'm using dash cams to capture evidence that will help my case in a legal or insurance matter and I want require the data to be captured in a format that can easily be accessed by the largest group of people that might have need to access it - anything else is doing a disservice to me and potentially placing my future (legal and financial) in jeopardy. To do it because the new technology can save me 10% (or 20%, 30%, ...) on the amount of storage I'll use is foolish at best. Larger memory cards are cheap comparatively.
For that reason, and that reason alone, I will never have as my primary dash cam any camera that doesn't have H.264 either as the default or an option, at least until such time as H.265 or AV1 (or the next 'latest and greatest') becomes an industry standard supported by every device in use as much as is possible.
Dude, NOTHING can be farther from reality about "Compatibility" when it comes to the legal sector.
My Grandfather been a Expert Witness in the Private Security sector for more than 30yrs, and has delt with hundreds of cases that involve CCTV footage, and dash cam footage from various sources.
Bar fights, shootings, parking lot brawls, break-ins, strong arms robberys etc.
I have assisted him over the years, since i am a techy and he is not, and have dealt with said footage. (saved some of it too, just in case he accidently deleted it, shhh, don't tell the lawyer's)
99% of the time, the footage is some proprietary format, locked to having to use some specific playback software that is super clumsy and unintuitive to use.
Some Police/First Responder Dash cam/body cam systems, have encrypted video even.
3yrs ago, delt with legal things, when my grandfather was hit by a reversing car in a parking lot, while walking out of a gas station store, the Police getting cctv footage. How incompetent they were, and how the say the burned disc they got from the store, "was blank", ... in my experience, it matters not what format the files are made in. Its the incompetent workers, and officers that do not know how to do anything tech wise, that is the main failure point in legal matters. Instead, all we got, was the officer watched the video on the monitor at the store, and his notes on what the saw. The store refused to give us the footage, and the police and lawyers dragged their asses past the 90 day store retention policy, it was never recovered.
Also, having worked in a retail store, and used their CCTV dvr to acces footage when needed, how incredibly overcomplex and clumsy a GUI they have. So it is no wonder to me how average person can not figure out how to export footage in to any sort of "standardized" media format.
Having served on several Jury's, it is always some issue playing footage, and, still see VHS/hi8 tapes being used. Had one trial, just last year, where the Defendants iphone, was handed around to each member of the jury, and instructed to tap the play button, on the footage page in the Ring Doorbell app. No one ever could figure out how to export it, download it, cast it. etc. THIS is the state of American Court system yo...
